Innovation Asset Blog

LinkedIn harvests innovation from Digg's patent portfolio

The digital media community has been abuzz in recent weeks tracking the decline and ultimate sale of popular social news sharing website Digg. Now that the fallen company has effectively redistributed its physical and intellectual assets to various corners of the technology industry, it looks like leading social media platform LinkedIn could capitalize on some savvy patent acquisitions.

According to TechCrunch, much of the early reporting regarding the Digg saga was focused on the fact that the company's final assets ultimately sold for $500,000. This was remarkable in and of itself considering the company was once in talks to be acquired by Google for approximately $200 million. But a more thorough investigation of the final days of Digg has since revealed that LinkedIn had actually slipped in under the radar to acquire up to $4 million worth of the company's intellectual property portfolio.

The strategy was a natural fit, according to All Things Digital, as the majority of Digg's intellectual capital was tied to its "social news interface." In alignment with its branding as a social media platform for business professionals, LinkedIn has been consistently integrating industry news into its site in recent months.

According to the news source, the primary patent in question surrounds the topic of "content visualization," and could allow the website to add new dimensions to its news presentations, including advanced mapping and voting systems that prominently display stories that will be most engaging to each individual user.